Fine line black tattoo of a seated dog with a cat beside it, placed on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dog and cat outline on the upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A single continuous black outline shows a seated dog in profile with a smaller cat standing at its front, the cat's tail curling up past the dog's leg. The linework is thin and even with no shading, and the design is entirely black ink on pale skin. The tattoo sits on the upper back against a dark background, with the subject centred in the frame.

Fine line Back Dog Cat Pet Outline Animal

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell Corran had painted boat names on the harbour at Skerrow for thirty years, and she knew the look of a dog who had decided to wait. Bramble had sat at the end of the north pier since the Mary Jane went out in February, haunches square to the water, and nobody could shift him. The fishwives brought him herring heads he would not touch.

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The cat turned up in March, a grey thing with a bent ear who had lived on the salt store roof. Nell found her one morning climbing Bramble's back leg as if it were a ladder she had always known the rungs of. She settled against his shin and did not leave. Bramble did not move either, but his tail thumped once on the stones, and Nell took that as a yes.

She kept a pot of black enamel for lettering and a brush with one hair left in it. On the back of an old sign board she drew them without lifting the brush: the dog upright and watchful, the cat's tail rising past his leg and curling at the tip like a question. She did it in one go, because anything you stop to fix gets heavier.

When the bell finally rang across the bay, it was a stranger's boat and it brought no one. Bramble stood, looked at the cat, and walked back up the pier with her tail still hooked to his leg, which was the only way she would travel. Nell hung the board above her door. Anyone who asked what it said got the same answer: it says they came home together.